APM Analysis

GE Vernova | Lead UX Designer

APM Analysis

GE Vernova | Lead UX Designer

APM
Analysis

GE Vernova +
Lead UX Designer

Prologue

Asset Performance Management (APM) software suite is an on-prem and cloud based platform which enables increased reliability, decreases maintenance costs, lowers risk, and accelerates decarbonization efforts. One of APM's module offerings is called Analysis.

The Analysis module provides engineers with real-time analytics used to address current or potential health issues a plant (electric, hydro, wind, etc.) may encounter. APM monitors the different assets that make up the DNA of the premise, collects the data and surfaces those data points into the application. Analysis displays all the different data points collected in different chart formats.

This tool has been around for close to a decade, however through the years it has not received a proper face lift or significant tech updates. Analysis started to show its age by looking dated and started to present major problems as it couldn't be updated with new technology. Adding the necessary features asked by our users was becoming challenging.

The application was in such a critical state that revitalizing it was originally planned to take between 6 to 8 months. The reality became an ongoing multiyear effort to get it to a more stable and scalable state.

The goals of the UX team were:

Improve its usability, discoverability and minimizes white space (users requested this).
Leverage a new design system as much as possible except for instances in which components didn’t exist.
Improve the workflows and address user’s complaints.
Connect the two different data types (TimeSeries data and SmartSignal analytics) into a single coherent experience. Both chart types and capabilities needed to "co-mingle" rather than existing in two separate versions of Analysis.

ServiceNow was the backbone of General Electric’s IT processes and requests. On a daily basis there are up to 15,000 users working on request tickets all around the world.

For a long time, this tool had received little attention and was behind on multiple critical updates. The lack of updates left it with potential security risks. It was imperative to modernize the ServiceNow instance as soon as possible.

The goals of the UX team were:

Improve its usability,

Improve the user interfaces,

Help promote ServiceNow
Keep the system out of the box as much as possible
(no over customization).

ServiceNow was the backbone of General Electric’s IT processes and requests. On a daily basis there are up to 15,000 users working on request tickets all around the world.

The goals of the UX team were:

Improve its usability,
Improve the user interfaces,
Help promote ServiceNow
Keep the system out of the box as much as possible
(no over customization).

The Journey

At the beginning of this project, I was tasked to help our staff UX researcher to collect data (pain points, user personas, technical challenges, etc.), interview users and generate artifacts that could help us build a better version of the application. For 6 to 8 months we work simultaneously collecting the data, creating low fidelity wireframes and testing our initial hypothesis.

Once we had all the necessary data, I was tasked to start developing the initial UI. Unfortunately, soon after; our research retired. That left me as the lead designer for this project. It didn’t take to long for us to face some challenges. As the new designs were coming along, the organization started a new initiative that would affect directly the UI and the experience in general. The UX team was in the early stages of introducing a new design system called DEX. This was a challenge because we had a mandate to adopt a design system that was not ready to be consumed (it was being designed and developed as Analysis was going through its redesign). In order to deliver as leadership asked, I was forced to design with a “proto” version of the design system that was in constant flux. This was due to the amount of rework we were facing in both the design and the development side. At that point we accepted the technical and design debt to reduce the amount of constant rework.

As the project continued to move forward, I worked alongside our SMEs (subject matter experts), to created detailed blue prints for how we wanted the application to operate. This included every tool bar, chart hart type and interaction. All the documentation and artifacts created helped the development team scope the work and develop it. In some cases, we changed the design to accommodate technical challenges that would be presented due to the tech stack used.

The Results

This new redesigned version of Analysis went to GA on July 2025 with a target date of sunsetting the original version in Q2 2026. This project took us close to 3 and half years to go live due to not only technical challenges but the company’s re-organization and layoffs.

Currently, Analysis is still working on some new features and paying off some of the technical and design debt that was incurred. Overall, we have improved the application in almost every aspect our users needed from us. We are still adding new features and updates are been made almost weekly. I don’t have doubt in my mind that Analysis will be one of the best designed and developed applications in the entire APM ecosystem. Only time will tell.